Tempered
by i AM the Random Idiot
Summary: ruby/courtney ;; she misses weakness sometimes.


**Tempered**

ruby/courtney ;; she misses weakness sometimes.

(a/n) wrote this whole thing at 2 am in a weird daze. uh. you're welcome?

(disc) the usual

* * *

Courtney's first memory is watching a candle burn. She's not sure why she's thinking about that at the moment, but you think about weird things when you're trying to think about anything but how ridiculously _not right_ the thing is that you're doing right now. Which, in her case, happens to be removing her gloves – the last articles of clothing she's actually wearing apart from her lingerie – and running her hand through the soft black hair of a kid young enough that his voice still cracks every once in a while.

He blushes and Courtney wonders for the seventh time whether this is going to send her to Hell, or if she was already going there. "Don't ask it, Ruby," she warns him, putting a finger to his lips (lips way too soft and kissable to belong to a boy, really). "This doesn't have to mean anything." _If you don't want it to_, she almost says, but she bites the words off and swallows them before they go anywhere.

"I don't know what I'm doing," he says when she removes her finger, almost despairingly.

"Good. I do. That's why you're here, isn't it?" Courtney replies, sitting down on the bed and arching her back. "You want experience. I'm bored. That's a fair enough exchange." She smiles now, her coy smile, the one she saves for special occasions. This brings back memories – the first time she saw those eyes like embers, she'd had him trapped in Rusturf Tunnel, and never known exactly why she'd pursued him once he'd gone. Four years later, she still doesn't know why. It's possible she never will.

Ruby hesitates. "Maybe I shouldn't... Maybe I should go."

Maybe he should. But damn if Courtney wasn't an expert in doing things she shouldn't. "Come here," she said, beckoning with one finger. Lifting one leg up to the bed, leaving the other to dangle teasingly, and when he drifts close enough, unsure and wavering but drawn by the allure of the feminine and unknown, Courtney snatches his wrist and pulls him close. "This is the most beautiful act two adults can do together," she whispers into his ear. "Come on, Ruby, you've never disappointed me before."

"I'm scared," he admits, eyes flicking back and forth between the wall and the straps of her bra.

"Don't be," she murmurs, before pulling his head and those lips down to meet her own. They're just as soft as they look. This isn't right, and that's exactly why Courtney is doing it. There's something powerful about fire, the way it stains everything it touches with soot and reduces its weak parts to ash. What's left is the strongest. Tempered. Courtney is nothing but black iron on the inside now, shedding flakes of surface rust. Hard and enduring.

Her hands run down his back. He gasps and it's such a tiny sound, almost feminine, when she bites playfully at the nape of his neck. Of course he moisturizes – it's so utterly Ruby that Courtney is astonished by her own surprise, once she thinks about it. Except she really shouldn't be thinking about this.

"Careful," she says, when he begins to get daring with his hands – the bra's gone now – "this isn't a contest of strength." But she hardly needs to remind him. For a teenage boy almost as tall as her, now, he has the gentlest touch. She didn't even notice his hands on the burn scars across her stomach until he pauses.

This is it. This is when he finally admits he's not ready, and leaves. Which he would be within his rights to do. Which they both should have done from the start.

"...You got these chasing me," he says softly.

Surprising, that he even remembers.

This is it. Not that she'd expected much else. Courtney's all steel and sinew on the inside, and she will get over it. She will, in fact, look back on this mistake and see it as a blessing, that she came to her senses and stopped attempting to corrupt the innocence of a boy seven years her junior.

It's just that she misses softness – weakness – sometimes.

Which is why it's such a shock when Ruby bends down and kisses the dead skin there, runs his lips over her navel until she shudders a little with the unexpected pleasure. "Wh–?" she gasps.

He looks up the length of her body and flashes her a perfect grin. "You look better when you're smiling for real, Courtney," he says, and touches her cheek.

It's so ridiculously, stupidly _corny_ that she can't help but burst into laughter. "You're not going to win any Lifetime awards, Ruby," she says, maybe with a bit of an edge. "This is real life."

He shifts his head slightly, so that his hair shifts slightly away from the right side of his face. Courtney has to stifle a gasp – she's never gotten a good look at him without his hat before, and –

"I know how it feels," he says, running a finger over the matched pair of long scars running up from his temple, "to think you'll never be beautiful."

Oh. Oh, this kid. _Oh, Courtney, you're never going to stop chasing him_, she thinks, _regardless of whether you know why_. Because he's tempered in his own kind of fire, and in his case, maybe softness isn't weakness at all.

"You know, I lied before. Somehow," she says, "when I'm with you, I'm never bored."


End file.
